Prepare for a HARD LANDING tomorrow…

Tomorrow, Blackstone Publishing are due to publish a new audio edition of HARD LANDING by Algis Budrys! Originally published in ??, here’s the synopsis for the classic novel…

A science fiction adventure told from the point of view of aliens who crash-land on Earth and must assimilate in secret — until their human cover is blown

Budrys’s final novel opens with the report of a man found electrocuted on suburban train tracks in Shoreview, Illinois. Neville Sealman appeared to be just another commuter, but after his tragic death, no one comes forward to claim his body. And a routine autopsy reveals some disturbing physiological anomalies. Then a spaceship is unearthed in a New Jersey swamp. It’s the stuff of tabloids — except it’s all true.

Years earlier, a starship crash-landed on Earth. Its passengers, human in appearance, were forced to go their separate ways in an alien world. No one knows that these otherworldly visitors have been living among the human race — but now their cover could be blown.

Told in the form of an investigation reconstructed through direct and indirect witness testimony, Hard Landing takes the listener into the minds of its four protagonists as they struggle with the far-reaching ramifications of discovery. This is a suspenseful and revelatory novel about the elusive, ever-changing nature of identity.

Blackstone has also published three other classic Budrys titles: WHO?, ROGUE MOON and MICHAELMAS.

Six of Budrys’s classic books are available as eBooks via Open Road Media: WHO?, FALLING TORCH, ROGUE MOON, THE FURIOUS FUTURE, MICHAELMAS, and HARD LANDING.

In related news, the MIT Technology Review recently ran a lovely profile of Budrys and his work, which you can read here.

‘The fiction Budrys himself began writing as a young man in the 1950s still provides as good evidence as exists that SF can be literary art; at the time, it led his fellow practitioners to regard him as the one among them who was most likely to transform their field into a fully adult literature… Budrys’s science fiction presents an alternative version of the genre–a promise of better possibilities that were never quite realized. Indeed, the bulk of Budrys’s writing was published a half-century ago and isn’t in print, though it’s easily obtainable from online booksellers or brick-and-­mortar secondhand stores. You should make the effort. This is what science fiction can be but hardly ever is.’